Text – Part 1

The Rhinoceros Song And The Sea

About the poem: Perhaps (I wondered) the rhinocerine culture holds to its own origin myths; one that tells how their ancient woolly ancestor, Coelodonta Antiquitatis, was, in the great Oligocene regression of the tropics to the equatorial belt, 21–26 million years ago, guided across the ocean by the universal songs of the sea, a navigational symphony presided over by a cetacean choir of humpback whales. For how else is it that these same songs became the lingua franca of the rainforest rhinoceros of Sumatra?

However as settlement and land clearance accelerates through the 21st century these Dicerorhinus Sumatensis, naturally reclusive individualists, find it harder and harder to overcome endemic isolation to find their promised love, and the songs that once echoed through the rainforest are fast fading from this planet’s repertoire.

In The Rhinoceros Song and the Sea, the first fable from an opera suite called The Rhinocerotidae, I have imagined the life, love and longing of a menopausal rhino in the jungle glades of Sumatra.

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Old Rhinini hums the ancient lullaby, Its provenance as shadowy as the jungle floor, Its strange syllables salty as the sea, Echoes of an ancient ocean crossing song-guided by Benevolents of yoreseep through its melismas into memoryas legend into mythos seeps. Old Rhinini cries out for Dicero, the lover she had conjured in her youth.Now made flesh he wanders near. A little late, She sighsBut once she heard his voice, singing back,‘Eeeep’, she voices softly. There’s no reply today. Old Rhinini sniffs a piece of dung she keeps . Finders keepers, Finders keepers… Mmmmm, a faecal trace of you, spiced with the scent of leaves I cannot reach,Not since the jungle cleaved in two and bled(sniff) Mmmmmm… a fragrant sign of you, passing here. But when?Before the season turnedBefore the jungle bled.Old wisdom knows the secrets locked within this calling card;his way, his health his heart Where he watered, where he wallowed, where he fed, Finders Keepers, this sweet earth of you, but the seasons turned and thenthe jungle bled Reverie draws Rhinini to the thinning edgewhere aliens have trod away the landscape and move like ants between their piled rubble. Where her lovers song, sucked sideways into slipstreams, eddies, scattered in the turbulent melange. This gulf, this cancer, swallowing the paths of lifetimes passing;Throughways where once time lay layered in clay-hard shims,where I perchance heard echoes of the old ones sing,now end abruptly in abyss.No song. She draws back into gloomy heartlandsto the wombing comfort, vine-meshed dark, To wallow in her private mudden bath. . . . A scream.A tiny scream ..made so small by distance,pinpricks the calmAs if some minor prey by harimau brought down Yet more than terror thrills through blanket vines, A tad too shrill it strikes in deep amigdalaFor squealing predator not prey it isthat utters such tormented soundsas if its soul demented by the crime. And it’s the voiceless agony of jungle sentinels that palls, to hear their cracking spine, their flailing arms, Beloved tenants flee, the suicide route to ground,And each twin towers tree, shockingly crashing down The mantle gashed,A gaping wound that lames the gaian body and every part from bright crown to secret darkfrom leech to leaf to elephantfeels the body smart.eeeeEEEEEiiiii Ho! ka mudiak! Awas! Tarik! Hep, kiri-kiri! Alah! Jadi. (thud)Old Rhinini holds her ground, still as a stone Still as a twitching, quiveringstanding stonestraining a tufted eareeeeeEEEEiiii Cukuik, tarik, dorong, lagi! Old Rhinini aches with the tree, Awas, ke hilir, ke hilir, ke hilirthe pain without witnessed withinHep, kiri-kiri! Alah! Jadi (thud) the trunk her leg, the bough her limbThe breaking bough, ark ark ark ark aaark!!!! Smell.. (she sniffs the air) …the Fear The little people flee and I in the still dark my thudding heart my bones a brittle thrumRun, Run,the stabbing light in my eyeRun, the dreadful crack of spine, Run,Run, the creaking twisting down down downThe plunge to silent mourning groundI rununtil the still dark wraps aroundmy thudding thudding heart.EeeEEEEEiiiiiiAgain like tearing flesh from skinSnap! Crash!The sudden daylight flooding in ark ark ark ark aaark!!!All seeds and feathers tossed upon the windAn old Rhinoceros naked in the brightness, TremblingA hush. A shout. Elok-elok! Awas, badakThe loggers hearts a-thudding, fear and beading sweatTo greet this strangely wild,Half-forgotten beastditembok, ditahan, tangkapas myth? or mortal threat? Jangan dekat, mati awak, pelan pelan!This tete a tete…suspending time and breath, All hearts in mouth…biped and odd-toed ungulate.Ark ark ark ark aaark!!!!The birds, dislodged, aloft, looked down And many winged but one of mindswooped in. And each a tuft of hair a fold of skin a whiskered ear a pinch of limba thousand tiny tweezer beaks and flapping wings made light of that great Rhino queen. Up up the drag she felt it twinge, up up, the stretching saggy skin, up up the dizzy heady spin, up up above the little men, the crowning green, the view unfurled, the thick and thin, the ragged rim a-glimmer in the savage sun.And there for all to sickly see, And there for all to witnessAnd there for all to grieveand there……You asked where.Where hides your shy and galant Dicero, Each violent breach has rent apart young bull from matriarchRendered up a share of wild, arboreal shadow-zone from lovers reach.You were bold, Shy Dicero, to dreamwrapt in night, slip past the settlements,uncovered over threadbare hostile hillto seed a dream, to serenadeto plant a kiss on Rhinus lipsto explode your deep primordial essencestir a spark of life, to spawn a calfBut no no no no No!Not thisSong silenced here aloneDefaced defiled Your golden hornthat crowned your gentle whiskered face Has judas kissed away your love, Your progenyYour futureSeeping crimson from its gaping wound.Striated amber keratin,so fine so beautiful to touchis ground to dust mere dustElixir only to the rhino, heaving, full of life.. . .Old Rhinini cannot name the anguishHer first glimpse of love from unearthly heighthijacked by unearthly griefHer furrowed eye wellspring of an aeon’s tears,brims up and rolls one briny orb that dropsdrop downsplashinto the Java Seatossing up, hoh, in its salty spray sweet strains of humpback whale polyphony sonic droplets rise like mist on melismatic flurriesto flirt with fragments floating fresh in voice and memory“The songs, the songs.. These are my songs”the swaying ungulate exclaims“O Let me follow my tears, for my clan, my clanThey are calling me in, draw near they sing So long its been, to hear them sing”And she sang in an ecstasy of eeps and wails, Sang to the mist to the foam to the seaBut the birds, they hiss and can’t agreeNobody would drop their precious cargo into the sea“Fly on, fly on; Fly down; theres nothing there.Fly back; its best we fly on track.She wants the song; Oblivion.To Borneo, where rhinos throng.No No! Its just the song of Ghosts you hear; She’s Mad! No, No, its Grief ringing in your ear;She’s Sad.No, No, its prehistoric Rhino fish that never left the sea.You’re barking Ma-a-aaark aaark aark aark aark!As each beak of bird to bicker opens beckoning chaos to lose collective grip in the commotion Old Rhinini feels her body falling, falling, singing, calling, like a shaggy, saggy angel, graceful, silent, slow, tumbling, rushing toward the ocean wallow. Down…into the dream, I fall, I dive (she sings)Into the dream, the chantthe voice of earth of moon, of starprimordial sound to guide my body home…[Plunge. Splash. falling weightless in a fluid blue]I dream, I surely do.The last dung of Dicero long dry-lodged, safe, between her toes dissolves in the briny sea as past and future merge with primal foam. And great cetacean choristers enchanted by their sudden guestenfold her rhinus song, so like their own, of strange patois but all-familiar melodiesenfold her earthen voice in complex Ur-mammalian symphonies,and swim her in their midst beyond…, beyond…So merged again the songs. . .In Borneo treetops, birds are counting down, Two hundred and twenty fiveTwo hundred and twenty fourTwenty three …Two, …One, …gone.Rhinoceros Libretto Part 2&3 (5pTREATMENT+sketches)

Copyright: indija mahjoeddin 2012

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One Response to Text – Part 1

Great poem! Unfortunately, it was too late for the link by the time I got your message. It was gone. I’m in the midst of trying to fix my phone problem among many other things! Sounds like things are moving along for you! And thanks for Lachlan’s gift! He hasn’t seen it yet as he’s been with Chris, but I’ll show him the email tonight.

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MAYJanuary 1st, 2012

Find out if creative dev funds come through, either way JUNE we are heading to go head to head with the Rhinos in Lampung, immersion research and local artist workshops with TSL if they are still available then